Has Neon Found Its Next Oz Perkins? Distributor Buys New Film from ‘It Ends’ Director Alex Ullom

Ullom's second feature, "4 X 4: The Event," will begin production later this year; his "It Ends" made a splash out of last year's SXSW before Neon acquired it.

Turns out “It Ends” is just the beginning. Neon announced that it has acquired the worldwide rights to “4 X 4: The Event,” the second horror feature from director Alex Ullom, whose debut “It Ends” will be released by Neon later this year.

Neon only just bought “It Ends” last month after it premiered at SXSW way back in spring 2025, and already the company has picked up his second movie before “It Ends” opens later this year. It’s a whirlwind of a couple of months for Ullom; his film gained extra attention after it was one of the few films briefly made available through Letterboxd’s newly launched Video Store, which was designed to let film lovers digitally rent undistributed movies out of festivals.

Now with “4 X 4: The Event,” Neon is picking up worldwide rights to the movie ahead of a production start later this year. It seems to follow a similar trajectory Neon followed with another rising horror auteur, Oz Perkins, who got a first-look deal from Neon shortly after his film “Longlegs” became one of Neon’s biggest successes ever.

Neon’s “4 X 4” acquisition is the first acquisition coming out of Park City so far, where the market thus far for completed films premiering at the festivals has been deadly quiet. A source tells IndieWire that Neon made an aggressive deal to preemptively acquire the film ahead of it going into production. Spooky Pictures and Image Nation do have a film at Sundance, “Undertone,” but that film was already acquired by A24 following its world premiere at Fantastic Fest last year.

“4 X 4: The Event” follows eight contestants who enter an illegal, sensory-assault livestream where they must kill or be killed using only what they can order online. The film is being produced by Spooky Pictures and Image Nation as part of a multi-title partnership, and Neon is releasing another one of their movies later this year, Damian McCarthy’s supernatural horror film “Hokum” starring Adam Scott.

“It Ends” stars Mitchell Cole, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, and Phinehas Yoon, and it’s about a group of recent college grads who find their plans derailed when, after a late-night food run, they find themselves trapped on an infinite highway inside their Jeep, doomed to otherworldly terrors as they try to find an escape.

Producers for “4 X 4: The Event” include Roy Lee and Steven Schneider for Spooky Pictures, Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath for Divide / Conquer, Haley Johnson, and Evan Barber. Executive producers include Ben Ross for Image Nation and Jakob Pollack for Spooky Pictures. The deal was negotiated by Kate Gondwe for NEON with UTA Independent Film Group on behalf of the filmmakers.

Ullom is represented by UTA, Entertainment 360, and McKuin Frankel Whitehead.